My first solo climb and chainsaw video, accidentally deleting the footage from that video and general updates.
Yep, I deleted a days worth of video footage from a job that I'd been dying to do on camera.
The Job
About twenty feet from where we park the car, an oak branch had snapped and fallen to the floor. It remained attached to the the limb which was about twenty feet up the tree. I’d always had this earmarked for my first climb video as I couldn’t fix it from the ground without making the situation more dangerous.
The below images shows the branch in question. I took this photo on my phone as soon as I arrived and I’ve edited it heavily to show where the branch is.
Setting the scene
I use a DJI Action 3 camera to record my footage. It has this annoying habit of generating .lrf files. These are files that can be used by windows for video editing (apparently – merdinurgh). Given that I use a mac, these files are useless to me. They’re not small either, if an actual video file is 3.77gb, then the lrf file could be 1.22gb. Needless to say, they are a literal waste of space.
After a day of recording footage the first thing I do is get the SD card out of the camera, plug in my backup footage drive and transfer that days footage into my backup drive. I copy everything (including the lrf files) and then once everything has transferred to the backup drive, I delete all the lrf files from the backup drive.
Also, after a day of recording footage I am normally wasted and I stink to high heaven as tree work is sweaty work. Chainsaw pants (type c - all around protection) are lined with kevlar threads which, whilst very defensive against stopping a chainsaw mashing up your flesh, they also are very insulating. Add in some thick chainsaw boots and high thick socks to make said boots more comfortable and you’re entire bottom half is insulated to winter conditions - in summer.
Also, also, after a day of recording footage I typically have been working as hard as child in a workhouse at the turn of the 1900’s. It is amazing how much harder you work when the camera is on. The net result of this work is that I sweat.
Also, also, also, after a day of recording footage, I’ve normally been wearing a helmet all day. The helmet is a tight fit and it has this band that both presses tightly again my head and absorbs all the sweat. This is a perfect anaerobic environment for stink.
Also, also, also, also, after a day of recording footage, when I get home I have to unpack the car, clean the car, put the tools away in the garage, put the car back together (I remove the back seats in Jo’s Rav4 to make more room for tools), put t-shirts in the washing basket and set the chainsaw pants to air. If chainsaw pants couldn’t be any more gross, then understand that you don’t wash them much. Mine have been worn and heavily sweated in twice a week for six months. I will tell you have many times they’ve been washed at the end of this. So, I also have to find somewhere to turn the chainsaw pants inside out and let them air.
This is all a very long winded way of saying, that before I get to sit down at the computer and transfer the footage, I am normally totally wasted, quite dehydrated, desperate for a shower and really hungry. It is, I’ve found out, not the best environment for making “fun new decisions on your workflow”. So there I am on Thursday the 25th of May 2023, I’m home and I’m super stoked to have recorded the first full day footage of me doing an intro, setting my ropes, climbing up into a tree, setting anchor points and the proceeding to take care of some chainsaw work.
I have this great idea. I think to myself “I am pressed for time, I want a shower and I am hungry, what if I just delete the .lrf files from the SD card and then move the videos files onto my backup disk - everything will transfer faster”. Logical me replies saying “great - let’s do that then”. Creative me then smashes out the following command.
Yes, for those of you that don’t use command lines, this probably looks like voodoo. However, I’ve spent nearly half of my life writing software and I can state that there is nothing as fast as using the command line for certain things - batch deleting being one of them. There’s also nothing as permanent as using the command line. I was once again reminded of this permanence when, after confirming my own stupidity with a “press Y to continue”, I was horrified to watch all of that days footage be deleted.
Short version of the above command is “remove (rm) all files in this directory and any file matching .LRF”. The command I thought I’d typed is “remove any files that end with .LRF”. The difference between the two was the space between the asterix and the .LRF. Had I typed *.LRF instead of * .LRF then you’d all be watching a video this Friday of me doing climbing chainsaw treework. As it happens, now you’re reading this.
With friends, all is not lost
Thankfully, I had some friends (Chris & Jill) visit me that day at the woodland. They arrived just as I was finishing up said tree job and were interested enough to record their own footage of me doing the work. Jill was kind enough to share that footage with me and so I’ve managed to stitch it together into a little short video, which you can see below.
Before and After
Before I started filming this is how it looked. To be honest, you’ll probably just see a mess of trees, but if you look hard enough you’ll see the branch in question. I’ve tried to arrange the photo so it’s bang in the middle.
Here’s how it looked after I’d finished for the day. The two alders that I’ve stacked the firewood logs into (a.k.a the branch) are visible in the before photo just over the roof in the before photo.
This wasn’t a big job in terms of all the hazard trees, but it does open up important space at the top of the woodland. Space that will soon be needed for large delivery… but I’m not quite ready for it yet.
Next Hazard Job
The next big hazard job is either the sketchy birches over the path, or a new job I found, which I’ve called the cage. It is a massive section of oak tree that blew over in storm Arwen. I noticed it a few weeks ago. It has now been down over two years and has been drying out in all that time. Given that I’m on a massive firewood drive, it will be both perfect firewood fodder and video fodder. The danger is that if I start cutting away at it, it will fall on me. It’s pretty big with the apex of the branch being about fifteen feet from the ground. It’ll also be pretty heavy. Exactly the kind of thing you don’t want to have fall on you. I suspect a winch will be involved.
Next video - the log store!
I spent all last week milling up Dave’s old floorboards into laths that I’d used to convert an old key clamp shelf into a log store. For those of you reading who used to work at SoPost you may recognise the structure! The “scaffold” (it is not scaffolding) started life off as drawers, then became shelves, then they sat down the side of my house for a year and now they’re a log store in the woodland.
Anyway, I’ve actually got ALL the footage of this build from the start and the video should be out for you all to preview by next weekend.
Thanks for reading,
Jamie.
p.s. I am nearly at 1000 views the Youtube channel! Nothing in grand scheme of things really, but a milestone for me none the less!
How many times have I washed my chainsaw pants in six months: once.